BY THE TIME THE cigarette burns out, my heart’s resumed its ordinary cadence. I no longer feel the twinge of every nerve. I return to my desk and flip through the stack of telephone messages left there by Miss Simmons, ignoring all the beady sideways appraisals from every direction. I mean, I can’t blame them. Wouldn’t you be curious, too?

One by one, everyone returns to work. Herbert and I conduct a couple of interviews in his office, brand-new girls who show some real promise, maybe, even if the poor bunnies are hopelessly naïve in their brave red lipstick and their enthusiasm. We offer contracts to both, which they want to sign right away, God bless them. I tell them to take the paperwork home and read it carefully first. Don’t sign anything you haven’t read, I tell them, and they nod earnestly and stick the contracts in their pocketbooks.

By six o’clock, the office has cleared out. I help Herbert with his hat and coat and shuffle him out the door to the limousine waiting for him outside. While waiting for the elevator, I remind him of his dinner engagement and kiss his soft cheek good night.

The elevator arrives, Herbert steps inside, and I’m alone at last.

I return to the reception area and switch off the lights. The glow of an early summer evening pours through the windows. I’m due for dinner in forty-five minutes, and under ordinary circumstances I’d take the opportunity to walk the twenty-two blocks through this golden light. I’d set aside the worries of the day and enjoy the hubbub, the hurry, the joy of people headed home in weather like this—the way a summer evening can transform even dirty old Manhattan into a city of translucent wonder. Instead I duck into Herbert’s office and help myself to a glass of twenty-year-old single-malt scotch, no ice.

THERE ARE THOSE WHO claim that I slept my way to my current position, just outside the office of Mr. Herbert Hudson of the Hudson Modeling Agency, and I will allow there’s a grain of truth to that rumor, as there are to most.